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OPS underweights value of OBP, and my guess is their system also includes double plays and base running, which OPS does not.

They probably wanted something simple and easily understandable on a day to day basis to motivate young players. Knowing that what tharl extra base could be worth or cost you is one way of making it immediate.

It is figured in this manner: Bases are derived by adding total bases, walks, hit by pitch, stolen bases, sacrifice hits and sacrifice flies. Outs are totaled by adding "outs batting" (at-bats minus hits), sacrifice hits, sacrifice flies, caught stealing, and double-plays grounded into. Bases are then divided by outs. The result is the base-out percentage (BOP).

I suppose Daniel Murphy is lucky that he missed "qualifying" for this system by a year of service time. Despite being the only guy on the team last year who went out there every day and played well¹, he would have gotten a fine. If the system is literally what it says in the article (2B = 2, 1B/BB = 1, out = -1, 3B/HR = 0), he would have been docked $22,900. If it's (TB+BB)-(AB-H), which is probably more likely, he still would have been docked $16,500.

Obviously, we're talking about peanuts in terms of MLB salaries, so it's not a big deal in that sense. But the article is citing it as evidence of something bigger...

What began as gentle prodding from staff members in general manager Sandy Alderson's regime -- swing at strikes, not at balls -- has evolved into a system in which hitters are graded, judged, evaluated, acquired, traded, released and paid based upon their adherence to the system.

... and that's the part I don't know about. I mean:

Mets executives stress the importance of the process over results, which is why the organization considers it so critical for its players to understand not just what the Mets want, but why they want it, and how that will ultimately result in better success. To understand, for example, that walks are a byproduct of the system -- not its goal. That strikeouts are no worse than 400-foot flyouts, even if it means that through 15 games, the team is on pace to shatter Major League Baseball's team whiff record.

How exactly does this system help the players understand the concept that walks are a byproduct and not a goal? And just in general, how do you teach process with a results-based system? I don't see how.

The article also says:

coaches at each Minor League level were actually keeping score of their players through a point system, which had no correlation with traditional statistics. A hitter who worked a favorable count, for example, earned one point. A hitter who swung at a pitch out of the zone, regardless of the result, lost one.

That at least does teach process, although of course you wonder if you'd end up running Juan Lagareses out of the system in favor of Daric Bartons.

I kind of feel like all of this is attempting to hang a number on everyone's nose when that's not necessary. (Common Core Percentage? ;-) There are only a couple dozen players in the minor league system who have the potential to mean anything. Just coach each guy. Some of them will benefit by this sort of system; some of them won't; some may even be hurt by it. So focus on tailoring the instruction to the individual.

Also, y'know, try to draft Xander Bogaertses to begin with. Then you don't have to devote your minor league system to teaching them "approach." It's a skill that you drafted them on.

And then we need to do it in the majors, too? What are we even talking about? This...

Over the winter, the Mets targeted free-agent hitters whom they felt would fit into their system, ultimately signing outfielders Curtis Granderson and Chris Young.

... means what, exactly? That they walk a lot? (They do walk more than average, but they're not exactly the two players who first come to mind when you think "hitting approach.") That they strike out a lot? (They certainly excel there.) That you're going to teach them how to hit? That they're going to teach the other guys how to hit? What?

¹ Actually the only guy on the team to play more than 121 games, period.

I think you did your math wrong -- it's $200 for each base, -$100 for each out. Last year Murphy had 273 TB and 32 BB so that's worth +610; he made 491 outs.* HBP + steals - CS adds in another +47.

*So sayeth b-r. But AB - H is 470. He had 13 GDB to 483 I guess. He had 3 CS (and 23 SB which helps his total above) to get to 486. Was he thrown out on the bases an additional 5 times?

Ohhh ... sac hits and sac flies, not other baserunning outs. Fair enough from b-r's perspective, I'm not sure the Mets want to "punish" their players for successful sac bunts or for getting the run home.

The only advanced type thing I'd do is clue ballplayers in at where they get the best results (results being good contact, not outcomes) on pitches in the various parts of the strike zone, and try to get them to look for pitches where they have the best results.

In those private meetings, young players considered good enough to play pro ball are surrounded by DePodesta, the psychologist, Hudgens, the video coordinator and Alderson and instructed on how to hit and approach hitting. And none of the instructors ever got a hit in a major league game. Then DePo, after explaining that this was the team's operating philosophy and would impact their career and earnings, says "We don't want them thinking in the batter's box". W T F !!!

A question is whether this violates the restriction on performance-based clauses in contracts.

The excerpt says "future salary offers", so presumably they're working around it that way. So next year they might offer Ruben Tejada $2,017,400 instead of $2,000,000 after applying this metric. It's logically kind of silly since Tejada's past production is already priced into whatever offer they would make.

You want to ingrain habits in them so they don't have to think in the batters box.

You use incentives to help them work harder on the right things during practice and their development so they ingrain the correct habits. Whether these incentives are the right ones, whether they communicate the right things, is certainly debatable.

My parents always promised me big bucks for honor roll/4.0 GPA. It always got me super motivated and it ultimately always failed. Within a few weeks my friends would ask me to come over and smoke pot (or possibly I would suggest it, my memory of those days bit foggy:), etc, etc. I just could never focus my efforts for 3 months at a time.

I wonder if they just gave out free money every week to players in the farm system based on incentives like these whether it would offer more repetition and more effectiveness.

I had some similar incentives in undergrad. Could never pull off the 4.0 in undergrad, and we agreed on a "close doesn't count" policy. The incentives went away in grad school, when I explained that if I wasn't pulling a straight 4.0 every semester I had no business being there.

The incentives went away in grad school, when I explained that if I wasn't pulling a straight 4.0 every semester I had no business being there.

Interesting. We didn't have GPA in grad school we had "high pass" (H), pass (P), "low pass" (L) ... and theoretically F but one F and you were out so people got a continuance on any such course (not sure it ever happened for that reason but some of the non-native English speakers struggled in some courses).

Anyway, the point of my story was that on day one of our grad school orientation the Dept chair said "if you're getting Hs in your courses, you're putting in too much time on courses and not enough on your PhD."

For my MA and PhD, at different institutions, we had mixed classes with both MA and PhD students. There was definitely an understanding that the PhD students got graded on a different scale, with a higher bar for written work, but a lower chance of getting an A-/B+. An A- was definitely a "message" grade for the PhD students.

I teach a grad class every couple of years at my current job, and we have no pluses or minuses in the grad program, which really makes grading tricky-- it usually takes students until their second semester to realize that you have to being doing something really wrong to end up with a B.

My parents certainly never did this with me, but I got a 4.0 from 7th grade till the day I graduated college. Never got a red cent for it, never occurred to me that I might. The only thing that motivated me was a desire to prove that I was better than everybody else.

Which is to say, I don't think I like this program, because it's too one-size-fits-all.

I had friends that got paid for As. I never did. My parent's motivational tactic of choice was to shame and punish me for any grades lower than an A. This plan was highly effective in high school, but markedly less so in college.

I can't remember ever being asked or told anything about my grades. There was no discipline when I got my only C (6th grade class in which, to this day, I am convinced that the teacher lost a bunch of my assignments and decided it would be easy to just fob it off on me like it was my fault); there was no praise when I got straight A's. I had friends who were paid for their grades, which I found weird then and find weird now. (I find it VERY weird that you'd do it in college, where getting an A -- especially at a public school -- essentially consists of showing up. And the kid is nominally an adult.)

Maybe it's just that I never caused any trouble with my grades. I almost never got anything but A's, so nobody ever felt the need to incentivize or punish me. My middle brother was chronically in the #### for his grades.